Oliver Hanney

How can you study an economy when official statistics don't exist, or can't be trusted?

Really enjoyed today's article which outlines six 'forensic' methods available to economists, and applies them to North Korea ⤵️

Ray of hope? The rise of solar energy in China China’s solar subsidies triggered innovation and learning-by-doing that dramatically lowered global solar costs while generating domestic economic gains large enough to outweigh the subsidy costs, sho...

🆕 Ray of hope? The rise of solar energy in China

Today on VoxDev, Ignacio Banares-Sanchez, Robin Burgess, Dávid László, Pol Simpson, John Van Reenen & Yifan Wang outline their research on China's green industrial policy: voxdev.org/topic/energy...

Technology diffusion: The role of venture capital, universities and China Josh Lerner discusses why there is a gap between innovation and impact, and how policymakers can speed up technological diffusion.

🆕 How does technology diffuse?

This week on Ideas in Development, Josh Lerner joined @deenamousa.com & I to discuss why is there a gap between innovation & impact, + the role of venture capital, universities & China in diffusion: voxdev.org/topic/techno...

Technology diffusion: The role of venture capital, universities and China Josh Lerner discusses why there is a gap between innovation and impact, and how policymakers can speed up technological diffusion.

🆕 How does technology diffuse?

This week on Ideas in Development, Josh Lerner joined @deenamousa.com & I to discuss why is there a gap between innovation & impact, + the role of venture capital, universities & China in diffusion: voxdev.org/topic/techno...

Could rural-urban climate migration help formalise the economy? Evidence from Brazil shows that drought-driven rural-urban migration reduced urban informality over a decade, contradicting conventional wisdom.

🆕 Could rural-urban climate migration help formalise the economy?

Today on VoxDev, Clément Imbert (Sciences Po) & Gabriel Ulyssea (UCL) discuss how drought-driven migration reduced urban informality in Brazil: https://ow.ly/MHCf50YnTLl

How new export opportunities created good jobs in Vietnam Bilateral trade agreements create opportunities beyond signatories. The US-Vietnam trade agreement led to large, persistent increases in formal manufacturing employment in Vietnam through the entry and expansion of multinationals from East Asia.

🆕 How new export opportunities created good jobs in Vietnam

Today on VoxDev, Brian McCaig (Wilfrid Laurier University), Nina Pavcnik (Dartmouth Economics) & Woan Foong Wong (University of Oregon) discuss the far-reaching effects of the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement: https://ow.ly/YRZJ50Ymjw2

How did South Korea go from exporting wigs made from human hair & processed human urine (yes you read that right) to colour TVs?

Really enjoyed today's presentation by @jaedochoi.bsky.social & Michael Sposi on export-led growth.

Slides & recording available here: voxdev.org/voxdevlit/in...

Is quality upgrading in agriculture a path to poverty reduction? Under standard conditions in the Colombian coffee sector, the benefits of producing better coffee are not passed on to farmers, weakening their incentives to invest in higher-quality production. However, when a large international buyer required intermediaries to pay farmers higher prices for quality, this solved the hold-up problem, induced upgrading, and increased welfare along the supply chain.

🆕 Is quality upgrading in agriculture a path to poverty reduction?

Rocco Macchiavello (LSE), Josepa Miquel-Florensa (Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)), Nicolás de Roux (Uniandes), Eric Verhoogen (Columbia), Mario Bernasconi (University of Basel) & Patrick Farrell: https://ow.ly/Moeh50YlMhQ

🆕 Reducing air pollution: Can markets succeed where regulation fails? 📢

Today on VoxDevTalks, Michael Greenstone (@harrispolicy.bsky.social) discusses the potential of emissions trading systems in developing countries, highlighting evidence from Gujrat, India.

Link below ⤵️

One lesson that stood out across this work in India's courtrooms, classrooms & agriculture, is that the AI model itself is not necessarily the hard part.

For interventions to scale, the organisational plumbing around the model is crucial ⤵️

Three ways India is using AI for development Organisations in India are already using AI for development across its courts, classrooms and farms.

🆕 Three ways India is using AI for development

This week on Ideas in Development, I spoke with Utkarsh Saxena (Adalat AI), Claire Cullen (Youth Impact) and Niriksha Shetty (Precision Development (PxD)) about how their organisations are deploying AI in India, and what they’ve learned.

What education and minimum wages can – and can’t – do about wage inequality In Brazil, education raised productivity and reduced informality, improving outcomes for poorer workers despite limited effects on formal-sector wage gaps, while minimum wage increases compressed inequality but risked lowering formal employment for low skilled workers.

🆕 What education and minimum wages can – and can’t – do about wage inequality

Today on VoxDev, Daniel Haanwinckel (UCLA) discusses how education and minimum wages influenced inequality in Brazil: https://ow.ly/HF5C50Yk6fN

How China became the world’s factory: Trade, industrial policy, and growth China’s rise was powered by an export-led growth model reinforced by trade liberalisation, place-based and industrial policies, massive infrastructure investment, and a governance system that strongly incentivised local growth.

🆕 How China became the world’s factory: Trade, industrial policy, and growth

Today on VoxDev, Francesco Amodio (McGill University), Hanwei Huang (CityUHK), Yu-Hsiang Lei (HKUST) & Markus Poschke discuss China's export-led growth model: https://ow.ly/BcNX50YhvTJ

📢 Our new VoxDevLit on Industrial Development is out now!

Senior Editors Francesco Amodio & Markus Poschke summarise everything you need to know about industrialisation.

Read & download here: voxdev.org/voxdevlit/in...

Thinking like an economist about AI, labour markets, and AGI How do economists think about the economic impacts of AI today? And will our current economic paradigm still make sense if we reach AGI?

🆕 Thinking like an economist about AI, labour markets & AGI

This week on Ideas in Development, @akorinek.bsky.social joined @deenamousa.com & I to discuss how economists think about the economic impacts of AI today & whether AGI requires a new economic paradigm.

Mismeasuring learning: Beware of psychometric test scores High-frequency data from a large early childhood intervention in China indicates that skills develop through the emergence of qualitatively new abilities and stochastic fluctuations, rather than as higher levels of a fixed trait, challenging the practice of treating test scores as comparable measures of the same underlying ability across levels.

🆕 Mismeasuring learning: Beware of psychometric test scores

Today on VoxDev, Prof. James Heckman (Harris School of Public Policy) & Jin Zhou (CityUHK) challenge the practice of treating test scores as measures of the same underlying ability across levels: https://ow.ly/C5LN50YgXml

Qualitative interviews at scale: A new method with an application to aspirations We develop a new method to analyse open-ended qualitative interviews with large samples, and apply it to interviews with Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi hosts on parent’s aspirations for children, revealing dimensions of aspiration that standard surveys systematically miss. For instance, despite lower formal education, Rohingya refugees exhibit higher navigational capacity than host communities, a strength that becomes visible only through open-ended methods while still allowing for statistical inference.

🆕 Qualitative interviews at scale: A new method with an application to aspirations

Today on VoxDev w/ Julian Ashwin (Maastricht University), Vijayendra Rao (World Bank), Monica Biradavolu (QualAnalytics), Aditya Chhabra, Arshia Haque (Yale), Afsana Khan & Nandini Krishnan: https://ow.ly/cBhT50YgWmy

Thinking like an economist about AI, labour markets, and AGI How do economists think about the economic impacts of AI today? And will our current economic paradigm still make sense if we reach AGI?

🆕 Thinking like an economist about AI, labour markets & AGI

This week on Ideas in Development, @akorinek.bsky.social joined @deenamousa.com & I to discuss how economists think about the economic impacts of AI today & whether AGI requires a new economic paradigm.

🆕 Special Economic Zones: Why they succeed in some countries – and fail in others

In this episode of Economics Unpacked, Tevin Tafese (@giga-hamburg.de) and Alex Rothenberg (@maxwellsu.bsky.social) discuss the economy-wide impacts of Special Economic Zones in Vietnam and Indonesia.

Link below ⤵️

Important findings from today's article

1. The scope of global humanitarian need is larger than current estimates suggest.

2. The challenges of measuring food insecurity contribute to the systematic underestimation of food insecurity.

This is really a shame from a policy perspective - nulls can be very useful!

AI in Africa with Rose Mutiso YouTube video by VoxDev

Three keys to unlock AI in Africa: Power, connectivity & data

In this week's episode of Ideas in Development, Rose Mutiso joined @deenamousa.com & @olihanney.bsky.social to spell out the fundamentals that need to be in place for AI to take off in #Africa: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5td...

AI in Africa: Barriers, opportunities and policy Can AI take off in Africa? Rose Mutiso joins us to discuss the need for an energy and digital infrastructure revolution on the continent, and how to make it happen.

AI is often framed as Africa’s next leapfrog.

In Ep2 of our @voxdev.bsky.social series, Rose Mutiso argues this is the wrong frame: AI isn’t end-user tech like mobile phones, but an upstream, infrastructure-heavy system that concentrates value where power, compute, and data already exist.

might be of interest @drodrik.bsky.social

🆕 Excited to announce our free online lecture series on Industrial Development

To mark the release of our new VoxDevLit next week, with Senior Editors Francesco Amodio & Markus Poschke, we have organised a series of lectures on the key topics related to industrialisation.

Link to register below ⤵️

AI in Africa: Barriers, opportunities and policy Can AI take off in Africa? Rose Mutiso joins us to discuss the need for an energy and digital infrastructure revolution on the continent, and how to make it happen.

🆕 Can AI take off in Africa?

Today on Ideas in Development, Rose Mutiso (African Tech Futures Lab) joins @deenamousa.com & I to discuss the need for an energy and digital infrastructure revolution on the continent + how to make it happen.

Listen now @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/techno...

Crazy stat I thought.

In 1992 in Brazil, one in every 20 men who were formally employed by a private sector firm were employed as security guards.

AI in Africa: Barriers, opportunities and policy Can AI take off in Africa? Rose Mutiso joins us to discuss the need for an energy and digital infrastructure revolution on the continent, and how to make it happen.

🆕 Can AI take off in Africa?

Today on Ideas in Development, Rose Mutiso (African Tech Futures Lab) joins @deenamousa.com & I to discuss the need for an energy and digital infrastructure revolution on the continent + how to make it happen.

Listen now @voxdev.bsky.social: voxdev.org/topic/techno...

🆕 Free school meals: The world’s biggest social programme

In this episode of Economics Unpacked, Biniam Bedasso (@cgdev.org) and Fabio Sánchez (Universidad de los Andes) discuss the long-term impacts of school feeding programmes.

🔗 Link below ⤵️

AI and the industrial revolution: Similarities, differences and lessons How did society change during the industrial revolution? Are there lessons we can learn for the AI revolution?

People invoke the Industrial Revolution as reassurance about AI. But living through it meant decades of wage stagnation, job loss & unrest.

Ep1 of a new @voxdev.bsky.social series, we talk to economic historian Bruno Caprettini about what that analogy gets right/wrong

t.co/AyuTVMKcEY